EA Sports Plans To Digitize Madden Consumer

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Microtransactions, subscription model mentioned.

By Jim Reilly

Madden fans should expect to purchase digital content this season.

Speaking today at the Morgan Stanley Technology conference in San Francisco, EA Sports president Peter Moore talked about the current and future plans for the company. In the short term, he said he's most excited to see its digital business thrive on several of its key sports titles, including Madden.

"I think we need to move much quicker, in particular with Madden, through a digital world," Moore stated. "You're going to see more announcements there how we digitize our Madden consumer."

Moore later noted that while the EA Sports has dropped major support for the PlayStation 2, which has weakened overall Madden sales, PlayStation 3 and Xbox 360 game sales have picked up. He also the company's digital plans seen in its other titles could be on the way to Madden as well.

"What we're starting to do now is actually start to see growth on next-gen platforms, and perhaps more importantly you're going to see digital subscriptions, digital microtransactions; all those things that we seem to be able to drive hard against all our franchises, against the Madden consumer."

Moore stated that every iteration of Madden typically sells around six million units. The company is looking at ways to generate more revenue from that install base every year.

"What you should be looking for from me is 'How do I get an extra $4 or $5 dollars?', which is high margin digital revenue from that install base rather than continue to sell more packaged goods," he said.

Later on, Moore also described the struggles with keeping fans from quickly trading in their sports titles every year and discussed how digital content can keep a title going.

"It keeps the disc in the drive longer, it stalls trading the game in, it allows me to be able to take further advantage of that consumer over a longer period of time," he said. "Even if we do get second sales, we see that as an opportunity to drive digital margins."

"Sports games, because their seasonality runs out, are always something tempting to trade in. We've got to be able to build business models around allowing that consumer to trade it in and then monetize them," he added